Tulpa Meaning: Thoughtforms, Tulpamancy and the Risks
The first time I read the word, it was on a forum where young people were discussing, very seriously, how many hours you have to talk to an...
Enochian Language: What John Dee Recorded in 1584
On Friday, April 13, 1584, in a rented house in Kraków, a mathematician sits over a sheet of paper and writes down letters that a seer reads to...
Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy Explained
There is a book that turns up in almost every history of European magic and that almost nobody has read. You know the name — De occulta philosophia,...
The Romanusbüchlein: The Charm Booklet Behind Powwow
It is a thin booklet, hardly bigger than the palm of a hand, and it guarded more farmhouses and barns than any gilt-edged grimoire ever did. The Romanusbüchlein...
Where the Law of Attraction Actually Came From
If you have ever written an intention on a card, said an affirmation into a mirror, or been told that the universe is answering your vibration, you are...
How to Make a Mojo Bag (and Whose Tradition It Is)
A mojo bag is one of the few pieces of folk practice where the instructions are easy and the context is the hard part. How one is traditionally...
The Seven Planetary Metals and Their Weekdays
Sun and gold, Moon and silver, Saturn and lead. One of the oldest ordering systems the West produced — where it came from, the logic underneath it, how...
Theurgy: What the Neoplatonists Actually Practiced
Theurgy is the ritual practice of the late-antique Neoplatonists: joining the soul to the gods through actions, symbols and invocations. It is the opposite number of goetia, which...
Archangel Sandalphon: What the Sources Actually Say
Sandalphon is the angel the old texts place with his feet on the ground and his head among the creatures that carry the throne — and who takes...
Ouroboros Meaning: The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail
A snake with its tail in its mouth. No beginning, no end, nothing outside it. The creature devours itself and stays whole — it feeds on itself and...
Ars Goetia: Where the 72 Demons Actually Came From
Seventy-two spirits, each with a rank, a seal and a job description, sealed in a brass vessel and thrown into a lake by King Solomon — that is...
Alchemists Who Failed: The Gilded Gallows of 1597
Georg Honauer was hanged in 1597 on a gallows made of the iron he was supposed to turn into gold. What happened to gold makers who could not...